I do not think about being beautiful. What I devote most of my time to is being healthy.

A study of the brains of more than 200 deceased football players — including 111 who played in the National Football League (NFL) — reveals that nearly 90 percent of the players had a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

CTE is likely caused by repeated blows to the head, according to the Mayo Clinic. People with the condition get worse over time and can develop symptoms such as learning difficulties, memory loss and depression.

But CTE can be definitively diagnosed only after a person has died, during an examination of the person’s brain, according to researchers at Boston University’s CTE Center, who conducted the new study. [Images: Brains with CTE]

In the study, published today (July 25) in the journal JAMA, researchers found evidence of CTE in 177 out of 202 brains, or 87 percent of the individuals. Among the brains of NFL players, 110 out of 111, or 99 percent, had CTE. (The other men who had donated their brains for the study played football either semiprofessionally, or in college or high school.)

CTE ranges in severity from mild to severe. Among the former NFL players in the study, the disease

Most patients who are prescribed opioids after surgery don’t take all of the prescribed pills, leaving leftover opioids that could be used inappropriately, a new review of studies finds.

Between 67 percent and 92 percent of the patients included in the review reported that, after a surgical procedure, they had unused opioids left over from a prescription. In addition, more than 70 percent of the patients in the review said they stored the leftover drugs in an unlocked location, such as a medicine cabinet, according to the review, published today (Aug. 2) in the journal JAMA Surgery.

An estimated 3.8 million Americans use opioids improperly each month, according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual survey on drug use. And more than half of the people who misused the drugs said they got the pills from a friend or relative in at least one of the following ways: They were given the pills for free, they paid for them or they took them without asking, according to the review. [America’s Opioid-Use Epidemic: 5 Startling Facts]

Surgery is often the first time a person is given a prescription for opioids, the

A total solar eclipse wowed viewers across the United States on Monday (Aug. 21), but for many, this amazement was followed by worry about whether the eclipse had damaged their eyes or caused other symptoms.

Shortly after the celestial event, Google searches for terms such as “solar eclipse headache,” “eyes hurt” and “seeing spots” all increased, according to Mashable.

Fortunately, experts say that if your eyes felt a little strange after the eclipse, it’s not necessarily a reason to worry. It could be that you havedry eyes from keeping your eyes open too long, according to Dr. Vincent Jerome Giovinazzo, director of ophthalmology at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City. Giovinazzo told Live Science that he has already seen several patients who said their eyes felt funny after watching Monday’s eclipse, and they all had dry eyes.

If you did damage your eyes from looking at the eclipse, it would not be something you would feel. Rather, it would be something you would see. Symptoms of “solar retinopathy” — or damage to the eye’s retina that can occur from looking at the sun — are visual. (The retinas have no nerve fibers, so

The announcement by researchers in Portland, Oregon that they’ve successfully modified the genetic material of a human embryo took some people by surprise.

With headlines referring to “groundbreaking” research and “designer babies,” you might wonder what the scientists actually accomplished. This was a big step forward, but hardly unexpected. As this kind of work proceeds, it continues to raise questions about ethical issues and how we should we react.

What did researchers actually do?

For a number of years now we have had the ability to alter genetic material in a cell, using a technique called CRISPR.

The DNA that makes up our genome comprises long sequences of base pairs, each base indicated by one of four letters. These letters form a genetic alphabet, and the “words” or “sentences” created from a particular order of letters are the genes that determine our characteristics.

Sometimes words can be “misspelled” or sentences slightly garbled, resulting in a disease or disorder. Genetic engineering is designed to correct those mistakes. CRISPR is a tool that enables scientists to target a specific area of a gene, working like the search-and-replace function in Microsoft Word, to remove a

Anorexia nervosa involves an extreme obsession with limiting food intake and weight that can end up taking over a person’s life. It is defined as a perceived intense need to drastically limit food intake to produce weight loss.

Anorexia is often thought to affect mostly women. “There is evidence that this is the case, but also conflicting information that boys are equally anorexic but it goes unnoticed and underreported,” said Jeanette Raymond, a licensed psychologist. Anorexia affects 0.9 percent of American women, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD). From 5 to 10 percent of people diagnosed with anorexia are male, according to the University of Pittsburgh.

Anorexia is not really about food, according to the Mayo Clinic. People with anorexia are looking for a way to cope with emotional problems, so they try to find something in their life they can control. Food is something that is a constant in a person’s life, so it can be controlled.

Causes

As with many mental-health conditions, the exact causes of anorexia are difficult to pinpoint. Scientific research has helped to

From jogging to weightlifting, physical activity is good for you, in part because it helps your body fight inflammation. Now, a new review explains exactly how exercise works to lower inflammation.

Inflammation is the body’s way of healing itself after an injury and protecting itself from infection; but chronic inflammation is linked with all kinds of diseases, from diabetes to heart disease. When you start exercising and moving your muscles, your muscle cells release a small protein called Interleukin 6, or IL-6, which appears to play an important role in fighting inflammation. IL-6 has several anti-inflammatory effects, including:

Lowering levels of a protein called TNF alpha, which itself triggersinflammation in the body.

Inhibiting the signaling effects of a protein called interleukin 1 beta, which triggers inflammation that can damage the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.

The biggest factor in determining how much IL-6 your muscles release is the length of your workout — the longer your workout, the more IL-6 is released, according to the review of relevant research. For example, after a 30-minute workout, IL-6 levels may increase fivefold, but after a marathon, the levels may increase by a factor of 100, according

The patterns in your brain may predict how your body physically reacts to stressful situations, a new study finds.

That’s important, because some people have stronger physical reactions to stress than others: Their hearts beat faster, and their blood pressure rises more, than you’d see in less “reactive” individuals, according to the study. And this “exaggerated” stress response can have negative consequences in the long run. [10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Brain]

People whose blood pressure shoots up in stressful situations are more likely to develop high blood pressure in the future, and they may also have an increased risk of death from heart disease, according to the study, published today (Aug. 23) in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“It’s the people who show the largest stress-related cardiovascular response who are at the greatest risk for poor cardiovascular health, and understanding the brain mechanisms for this may help to reduce their risk,” senior study author Peter Gianaros, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, said in a statement.

To study this “brain-body” relationship, the researchers performed brain scans on more than 300 adults while also monitoring their physical

Is alcohol good or bad for your health? With no shortage of contradictory findings, it’s understandable if you’re left feeling like you’ve had a little too much to drink.

Now, new research from Denmark suggests that moderate levels of alcohol drinking — not binge drinking — may be linked to a lower risk of developing diabetes. But it’s not just how much people drink, but how often they drink, that plays a role, the researchers said.

It’s important to note, however, that most experts recommend that if you don’t already drink alcohol, you shouldn’t start because of possible health benefits.

In the study, published today (July 27) in the journal Diabetologia, researchers found that drinking alcohol three to four days a week was associated with a lower risk of diabetes compared with drinking less than one day a week. [7 Ways Alcohol Affects Your Health]

The “findings suggest that alcohol drinking frequency is associated with risk of diabetes, and that consumption of alcohol over three to four days per week is associated with the lowest risk of diabetes, even after taking average weekly alcohol